Anna Akhmatova
(1889–1966)

For most of her life, the Russian poet Anna Akhmatova struggled against forces that conspired to keep her poems from being read. In order to even establish herself as a writer, she first had to defy a disapproving father. Later in her career, after the Russian Revolution of 1917, she fought against a much more powerful force—a Communist government that viewed her writing with suspicion and disapproval. Soviet police exiled her husband to Siberia and threw her son in jail, and the state-sanctioned Writer's Union discouraged publishers from publishing her work.

Despite the formidable forces lined up against her, Akhmatova succeeded in publishing many volumes of poetry. Her writing established her reputation as the most beloved Russian woman poet of her time. Readers especially admired her for not abandoning her homeland, even during times of war and revolution.

Akhmatova actually drew inspiration from some of the harshest political periods in Soviet history. Her most renowned works, Requiem (1963) and Poem Without a Hero (1960), derive their power from their dark subject matter—the mass arrests and executions of the Stalinist era. With the political thaw that took place after the death of Stalin, Akhmatova was able to publish more freely and influence a whole new generation of young poets.

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